While Armstrong coped with Napoleon in Paris, Monroe enjoyed a brief moment of sunshine on the other side of the Channel. After his diplomatic disasters he might think himself happy, though he only threw from his own shoulders upon those of Armstrong and Bowdoin the Florida negotiation which had thus far injured the reputation of every man connected with it; but he had double cause of rejoicing. He not only escaped from Talleyrand and Godoy, but also from William Pitt, whose body he saw carried amidst the pompous mournings of London in funeral state to Westminster Abbey, and left in solemn grandeur by the side of his great father. Pitt died Jan. 23, 1806, exhausted by the anxieties of office.

At last Fortune smiled upon Monroe with caresses more winning than any she had shown since her last sudden appearance before his eyes under the outward semblance of Barbé Marbois in Livingston's garden on the Boulevard Montmartre. Old King George, knowing no Tory competent to succeed Pitt or capable of controlling Parliament, summoned Lord Grenville and submitted to Charles James Fox. Grenville became First Lord of the Treasury; Fox took charge of the Foreign Office; Erskine became Lord Chancellor; Sidmouth, Lord Privy Seal. The union of different party chiefs was so general as to give the Ministry the nickname of All the Talents. By February 7 the revolution was completed.

Monroe was greatly pleased, as well he might be, for his position in England had been hitherto far from comfortable. To soothe the Tories,—who were prejudiced against him not only as American minister, but also as having when minister to France actively sympathized with the French Directory in hostility to England,—Monroe had thought himself obliged to shun the society of the Whigs, and had been restricted to such social relations as Pitt's friends would supply, which under the best of circumstances were neither extensive nor amusing. Fox made amends for this self-denial. His statesmanship was broad and liberal, his manners charming, and he had the quality, most rare in politics, of entire frankness and truthfulness. In a few days Monroe wrote home that he had enjoyed his first interview with the new secretary, "who in half an hour put me more at my ease than I have ever felt with any person in office since I have been in England." [1] Fox said little, but held out hopes; and Monroe had so long been left without even hope to nourish him that he gladly fed upon the unaccustomed diet. Nevertheless, more than a month passed before he ventured to make formal application[2] for an order to suspend the seizure and condemnation of American vessels under the rule established by Pitt and Sir William Scott. At length, April 17, at the Queen's drawingroom Fox took the American minister aside and announced himself ready to begin negotiation, and to pursue it without delay till it should be concluded.[3] He said that no trouble need be feared about the colonial trade, but that there would be objections to making payments for property already taken; meanwhile the seizures and condemnations were to be stopped.

The 1st of May arrived. Three months had passed since the new Ministry took office, yet nothing had been publicly done to satisfy the United States. The reason was well known. Fox was obliged to overcome many kinds of opposition both in and out of the Cabinet. The West Indian colonies, the royal navy, the mercantile shipping interest, the Tory country gentlemen, and the Court were all opposed to concessions, and only the Treasury favored them. To increase Fox's difficulties, news began to arrive from the United States of the debate in Congress on the Non-importation Act, of the loose talk of Congressmen and the vaporings of the press; and to crown all came the story that the mob of New York had taken the punishment of Pierce's manslaughter into its own hands. The English people honestly believed the Americans to be cheating them in the matter of the colonial trade; they suspected that their Yankee cousins were shrewd, and they could plainly see that Jefferson and Congress were trying to hide behind the shadow of Napoleon. Non-importation and commercial restriction had no other object than to give England the alternative of surrendering either to France or to America what she believed to be the price of her existence without the chance of fighting for it. Two thirds of the British people understood the Non-importation Act as a threat,—as though the Americans said, "Surrender to us your commerce and your shipping, or surrender your liberties to France."

Whatever were the faults or sins of England, they were at least such as Americans could understand. Her Government was guided, as a rule, by interests which were public, permanent, and easily measured. The weight of interests which had driven Pitt into his assault on American commerce was not lessened by the death of Pitt or by the return of Lord Grenville to power. On every side Fox found these interests active in opposition and earnest in pressing arguments against concession. Englishmen were used to giving and receiving hard blows. Seldom long at peace, they had won whatever was theirs by creating a national character in which personal courage was as marked a quality as selfishness; for in their situation no other than a somewhat brutal energy could have secured success. They knew what to think of war, and could measure with some approach to exactness its probable costs and returns, but they were quite unused to being conquered by peace; and they listened with as much contempt as anger to the American theory that England must surrender at discretion if Americans should refuse any longer to buy woollen shirts and tin kettles. Englishmen asked only whether America would fight, and they took some pains to make inquiries on that point; but it happened that of all the points in question this, which to Englishmen was alone decisive, could be answered in a syllable: No! America would not fight. The President, Congress, the press of both parties in the United States agreed only in this particular. John Randolph's speech on Gregg's Resolution was reprinted in London with a long preface by James Stephen, and proved conclusively that America would submit. Merry came as near to a laugh as his gravity would permit in expressing his contempt for the idea of war, and in urging his Government to resent the Non-importation Act; and although Fox probably thought poorly of Merry's judgment, he could not but show his despatches to the Cabinet if the Cabinet wished to read them. After the slaughter of Pierce, when the Federalist newspapers in New York and the irresponsible mob of seamen clamored for warlike measures, the only effect of the outcry upon England was to stimulate the anti-American prejudice and to embarrass the well-meant efforts of Fox, until his chief newspaper, the "Morning Chronicle," in a moment of irritation plainly told the Americans that they were much mistaken if they thought a war would be so very unpopular in England; and if they knew this, they would not hector or bully so much. Even the powerful interests directly engaged in trade with the United States made no attempt to protect themselves; they did not see that the British nation was ready and eager to cut its own throat in its desperate anxiety to save its own life. The contest with France had made all Europe violent and brutal; but England could boast that at the sound of British cannon the chaos had become order, that the ocean had been divided from the land, and as far as the ocean went, that her fleets made law. Two Powers only remained to be considered by Great Britain,—Russia and the United States. Napoleon showed an evident intention to take charge of the one; England thought herself well able to give law to the other.

Against such public inclination toward measures of force Fox struggled as he could, without united support even in the Cabinet. Men like Lord Sidmouth were little inclined to risk the fate of the new Administration by concessions to America; and the Tories, led by Canning and Spencer Perceval, profited by every English prejudice in order to recover their control of the government. Fox could carry his point only by adopting half-measures. Instead of procuring a new judicial decision or issuing an Order in Council, as had been done in previous times, for replacing American commerce in its old privileges, he caused Government to adopt a measure intended to produce the same effect, but resting on a principle quite as objectionable to Americans as the Rule of 1756 itself had ever been. May 16, 1806, the ministers of neutral Powers were notified that the King had ordered a blockade of the whole French and German coast from Brest to the river Elbe, but that this blockade was to be strict and rigorous only between Ostend and the Seine; while elsewhere neutral ships should not be liable to seizure in entering or leaving the blockaded ports except under the usual conditions which made them seizable in any case. Under this blockade an American ship laden in New York with sugar, the product of French or Spanish colonies, might sail in safety for Amsterdam or Hamburg. Monroe wrote:[4] "It seems clearly to put an end to further seizures on the principle which has been heretofore in contestation."

English statutes, like English law, often showed peculiar ingenuity in inventing a posteriori methods of reaching their ends; but no such device could be less satisfactory than that of inventing a fictitious blockade in order to get rid of a commercial prohibition. Interminable disputes arose in the course of the next few years in regard to the objects and legality of this measure, which came to be known as Fox's blockade, and as such became a point of honor with England; but its chief interest was its reflection of the English mind. To correct a dangerous principle by setting an equally dangerous precedent; to concede one point by implication, and in doing so to assert another not less disputed; to admit a right by appearing to deny it; and to encourage commerce under the pretence of forbidding it,—was but admitting that the British government aimed at illegitimate objects. America had always contested the legality of paper blockades as emphatically as she had contested the Rule of 1756, and could no more submit to the one than to the other, although in this case the paper blockade was invented in order to conciliate and satisfy her. The measure was intended for a temporary expedient pending negotiation; yet such was the condition of England that Fox's blockade became six years afterward one of the chief pretexts under which the two countries entered upon a war.

Another fortnight elapsed, but Monroe made no further progress. Whenever he saw Fox the subjects in dispute were discussed; but news arrived that the Non-importation Act had passed both Houses of Congress, and the difficulty of obtaining favors was increased by the attempt at compulsion. Fox showed less and less willingness to concede principles, although he did not, as Monroe feared, declare that the Act relieved him from any promises he might have made or from the fulfilment of any hopes he might have held out. Thus the matter stood, balanced almost equally between opposite chances, when, May 31, 1806, news arrived from America that Monroe's powers were superseded by the appointment of a special mission, in which he was to be associated with Wilham Pinkney of Maryland.

The blow to Monroe's pride was great, and shook his faith in the friendship of Jefferson and Madison. Three years had elapsed since he had himself been sent abroad to share Livingston's negotiations, and he had the best reason to know how easily the last comer could carry away the prizes of popularity. The nomination of a colleague warned him that he had lost influence at home, and that Jefferson, however well disposed, no longer depended on him. This was in substance the truth; but other and graver troubles were revealed in part to Monroe's eyes when William Pinkney arrived in London June 24, bringing with him the new instructions which were to become the foundation of the treaty.

These instructions[5] began by treating the Non-importation Act as at once a domestic and a foreign regulation, a pacific and a hostile act, a measure with which England had no right to be angry, and one which was calculated to anger her,—strictly amicable and at the same time sharply coercive. After this preamble, in which the threat was clearer than the explanation, followed an order precluding the possibility of successful negotiation. Monroe was to begin by imposing an ultimatum. The British government must expressly repudiate the right and forbid the practice of impressment, or not only could no treaty be made, but the Non-importation Act should be enforced. "So indispensable is some adequate provision for the case that the President makes it a necessary preliminary to any stipulation requiring a repeal of the Act shutting the market of the United States against certain British manufactures."

Besides this condition precedent, the instructions prescribed as another ultimatum the restoration of the trade with enemies' colonies on its old foundation and indemnity for the captures made under Sir William Scott's late decisions. Three ultimata, therefore, were fixed as conditions without which no treaty could receive the President's assent or procure a repeal of the Non-importation Act. The numerous requests to be further made upon Fox concerned many different points in dispute,—contraband, blockade, discriminating duties, immunity of neutral waters. East and West Indian trade, and trade with Nova Scotia; but these were matters of bargain, and the two negotiators might to some extent use discretion in dealing with them. Yet every demand made by the United States required a corresponding concession from England, for which no equivalent could be offered by the American negotiators except the repeal of the Non-importation Act.

Monroe knew that Jefferson had ever strongly opposed any commercial treaty with Great Britain, and that he never spoke of Jay's treaty except with disgust and something like abhorrence. Again and again Jefferson had said and written that he wished for no treaty; that he preferred to rely on municipal legislation as his safeguard against attack; and that he would not part with this weapon in order to obtain the doubtful protection of an agreement which England could always interpret to suit herself. Pinkney could add that Jefferson, as every one in Washington was aware, had been unwillingly driven into the present negotiation by the Senate, and that as the measure was not his its success would hardly be within his expectation; that it would embarrass his relations with Napoleon, endanger if not ruin the simultaneous negotiation for Florida, and exalt Monroe, the candidate of Randolph, at the expense of Madison, who was already staggering under the attacks of his enemies.

Monroe was well informed of the efforts made to raise or to depress his own fortunes at Washington, and could see how easily his rival, the Secretary of State, might play a double part. Nothing could be simpler than such tactics. Madison had only to impose on Monroe the task of negotiating a treaty under impossible conditions. If the treaty should fail, the blame would fall upon Monroe; if it should succeed, the credit would be divided with Pinkney. No one could suppose that Madison would make any great effort to secure the success of a negotiation when success might make the negotiator the next President of the United States.

Monroe could not doubt the President's coldness toward the treaty; he could not fail to see that the secretary's personal wishes were rather against than for it; and when he studied the instructions he could not but admit that they were framed, if not with the intention, at all events with the effect, of making a treaty impossible. No harder task could well have been imposed than was laid upon Monroe. Not even when he had been sent to Madrid in defiance of Talleyrand and Godoy, to impose his own terms on two of the greatest Powers in the world, had his chance of success been smaller than when his Government required him to obtain from England, after the battle of Trafalgar, concessions which England had steadily refused when she was supposed to be drawing almost her last gasp. For a British ministry to abandon the Rule of 1756 was to challenge opposition; to throw open the colonial trade was to invite defeat; but to surrender the so-called right of impressment was to rush upon destruction. No minister that had ever ruled over the House of Commons could at such a moment have made such a treaty without losing his place or his head.

If America wanted such concessions she must fight for them, as other nations had done ever since mankind existed. England, France, and Spain had for centuries paid for their power with their blood, and could see no sufficient reason why America should take their hard-won privileges without a challenge. Jefferson thought otherwise. In his opinion, all the three Powers would end by conceding American demands, not as a matter of abstract right but for fear of throwing the United States into the arms of an enemy. The instructions to Monroe rested on this idea; and that no doubt might remain, Jefferson wrote to Monroe a private letter which expressed the doctrine in set terms.

"No two countries upon earth," said the President,[6] "have so many points of common interest and friendship; and their rulers must be great bunglers indeed if with such dispositions they break them asunder. The only rivalry that can arise is on the ocean. England may by petty-larceny thwartings check us on that element a little; but nothing she can do will retard us there one year's growth. We shall be supported there by other nations, and thrown into their scale to make a part of the great counterpoise to her navy. If, on the other hand, she is just to us, conciliatory, and encourages the sentiment of family feelings and conduct, it cannot fail to befriend the security of both. We have the seamen and materials for fifty ships of the line and half that number of frigates; and were France to give us the money and England the dispositions to equip them, they would give to England serious proofs of the stock from which they are sprung and the school in which they have been taught, and added to the efforts of the immensity of sea-coast lately united under one Power would leave the state of the ocean no longer problematical. Were, on the other hand, England to give the money and France the dispositions to place us on the sea in all our force, the whole world, out of the continent of Europe, might be our joint monopoly. We wish for neither of these scenes. We ask for peace and justice from all nations, and we will remain uprightly neutral in fact."

This was masterful not to say dictatorial language; for it came in support of categorical claims which, however just, were vehemently opposed by every conservative interest in England. The claims which Monroe was to make as ultimata could not be conceded by England without opening the door to claims more sweeping still. In the same breath with which the President threatened England with fifty ships of the line in case she would not abjure the right of impressment and the Rule of 1756, he added:—

"We begin to broach the idea that we consider the whole Gulf Stream as of our waters, in which hostilities and cruising are to be frowned on for the present, and prohibited as soon as either consent or force will permit us. We shall never permit another privateer to cruise within it, and shall forbid our harbors to national cruisers. This is essential for our tranquillity and commerce."

These were bold words, but not well suited to Monroe's task or likely to encourage his hopes. President Jefferson was not only bent upon forcing England to abandon by treaty the right of impressment and the control of the colonial trade; he not only asked for liberal favors in many different directions, which required the whole fabric of British legislation to be reconstructed, without equivalent on the part of the United States,—but he had also "begun to broach the idea" that he should dictate where England's line-of-battle ships might sail upon the ocean. Monroe knew how such language would sound to English ears strained to hear the distant thunders from Trafalgar, and how such words would look to English eyes, dim with tears, as they watched their hero borne through the shrouded streets of London to rest in his glory beneath the dome of St. Paul's. That England was inflated with her triumphs, mad in her pretensions, intolerable in her arrogance, was true. A people that had swept the ocean of enemies and held the winds and waves for subjects could hardly fail to go mad with the drunkenness of such stormy grandeur. The meanest beggar in England was glorified with the faith that his march was o'er the mountain waves and his home upon the deep; and his face would have purpled with rage at the idea that Jefferson should dare to say that the squadrons of England must back their topsails and silence their broadsides when they reached the edge of the Gulf Stream.

With this picture before his eyes, Monroe could feel no great confidence either in his own success or in the good faith of the President's instructions, which tied him to impossible conditions. Nevertheless he accepted the task; and as he had gone to Spain with the certainty of defeat and mortification, he remained in London to challenge a hopeless contest. As though to destroy his only chance of success, on the very day of Pinkney's arrival Fox fell ill. His complaint was soon known to be dropsical, and his recovery hopeless. Two months passed, while the American envoys waited the result. Aug. 20, 1806, Fox, being still unable to do business, appointed Lord Holland and Lord Auckland to carry on the negotiation in his place. No better men could have been selected. Lord Holland especially, Fox's favorite nephew and the most liberal of all Whig noblemen, was warmly disposed to make the negotiation a success; but much invaluable time had been lost, and Napoleon was on the eve of Jena.

The negotiation began in earnest August 27, but proved to be long and arduous. The two British commissioners, though courteous and friendly, stood in constant fear of the charge that they had surrendered vital English interests under American threats. They were especially hampered by the Admiralty, the atmosphere of which, as Lord Holland complained,[7] made those who breathed it shudder at anything like concessions to the Americans; while the Treasury, though naturally still less yielding, listened willingly to every expedient that offered hope for the revenue. September 1 began the struggle over impressments; and from the outset Monroe saw that the American claim had no chance of success, while the case of the West Indian trade was almost equally desperate-Only one serious discussion had taken place when the death of Fox, September 13, produced a new delay of several weeks; and on resuming the negotiation, Monroe and Pinkney were required to deal with a new Foreign Secretary,—Charles Grey, Lord Howick,—to be better known in English history as Earl Grey. Such a change boded no good to the Americans. All Fox's influence could not counteract the Tory-instincts of Parliament; and what Fox could not do when the Whigs were strong could much less be done by Lord Howick when the Ministry was every day tottering to its fall.

November 11 the American negotiators wrote home that they had decided to disregard their instructions and to abandon impressments,—accepting, instead of a formal article on the subject, a note in which the British commissioners pledged their government to exercise the strictest care not to impress American citizens, and to afford prompt redress should injury be inflicted while impressing British seamen. Having thus made up his mind to violate instructions on the chief point of negotiation, Monroe found nothing to prevent his doing so in other respects. His progress under William Pinkney's influence was rapid; his good nature, in the face of Lord Holland's difficult position, was extreme; and at the end of a few weeks, Dec. 31, 1806, Jefferson's favorite diplomatic agent set his name to a treaty which, taking its omissions and admissions together, surpassed Jay's treaty in outraging Jefferson's prejudices and express desires.

That a people, like an individual, should for a time choose to accept a wrong, like impressment or robbery, without forcible resistance implied no necessary discredit. Every nation at one time or another had submitted to treatment it disliked and to theories of international law which it rejected. The United States might go on indefinitely protesting against belligerent aggressions while submitting to them, and no permanent evil need result. Yet a treaty was a compromise which made precedent; it recorded rules of law which could not be again discarded; and above all, it abandoned protest against wrong. This was doubtless the reason why Jefferson wished for no treaties in the actual state of the world; he was not ready to enforce his rights, and he was not willing to compromise them.

The treaty signed by Monroe and Pinkney Dec. 1, 1806, was remarkable for combining in one instrument every quality to which Jefferson held most strenuous objections. The three ultimata were all abandoned; impressments were set aside under a diplomatic memorandum which rather recorded the right than restrained its exercise; no indemnity was obtained for the ravages made on American commerce in 1805; and in regard to the colonial trade, a compromise was invented which no self-respecting government could admit. Article XI. of the treaty imposed the condition that West Indian produce, coming from French or Spanish colonies, and bonâ fide the property of United States citizens, might be exported from American ports to Europe on condition that it should have paid to the United States customhouse a duty of not less than two per cent ad valorem which could not be returned in drawback; while European merchandise might in the same way be re-exported from the United States to the West Indies, provided it paid not less than one per cent ad valorem in duties to the American Treasury. This provision was only to be compared with Article XII. of Jay's treaty, in which Lord Grenville insisted and Jay agreed that the United States should export no cotton. Even Pitt had never proposed anything so offensive as the new restriction. He had indeed required that the American merchant whose ship arrived at Baltimore or Boston with a cargo of sugar or coffee from Cuba should unload her, carry the hogsheads and cases into a warehouse, and pass them through all the forms of the American custom-house; after which he must turn about and stow them again on shipboard,—an operation which was usually reckoned as equivalent, in breakage, pilfering, and wages, to a charge of about ten per cent on the value of the cargo; but he had not ventured to levy a duty upon them to be paid to the United States government. One step more, and—as a clever London pamphleteer suggested—the British government would require the American stevedores to wear the King's livery.[8] Had it been stipulated that the custom-house payments should be taken as full proof of neutrality and complete protection from seizure, the American merchant might have found a motive for submitting to the tax; but the treaty further insisted that both goods and vessel must be in good faith American property,—a condition which left the door open as widely as ever to the arbitrary seizures of British cruisers and to the equally arbitrary decisions of admiralty courts.

"We flatter ourselves," wrote Monroe and Pinkney to Madison,[9] "that the sum agreed to be paid will not be felt as a heavy one by our merchants, whose patriotism will be gratified by the recollection that the duty which they pay will redound to the advantage of their country."

Mercantile patriotism was proverbially elastic; yet in the present instance not so much the merchants' gratification as that of the President was to be considered,—and Jefferson's patriotism could hardly approve this tax for the protection of British shipping and produce, which would on the one hand excite the anger of Napoleon, while on the other it conferred advantages merely during the period of war. Another objection existed which in Jefferson's eyes was fatal. He believed implicitly in the efficacy of commercial restrictions; he thought the Non-importation Act a better guaranty of good treatment than the best treaty ever made, and was quite ready to try the experiment of such a measure against England. Yet Article V. of Monroe's treaty pledged him for ten years to abstain from every attempt to discriminate against British commerce.

The smaller points conceded by Monroe and Pinkney were not less likely than the greater ones to disturb Jefferson's temper. The British commissioners refused to remove the export duty of two and a half per cent on British manufactures which Americans paid in excess of what was paid by European consumers. Trade with the British East Indies was restricted to ships which should sail directly from America and return directly thither,—a provision less favorable than Jay had secured. The trade with the British West Indies was a subject so delicate in Parliament that the two Englishmen refused to touch it, saying that any sanction of this trade, coupled with their sanction of the neutral trade with French and Spanish colonies, would endanger the treaty. They would enter into no arrangement of the trade with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada. They also refused to accept Madison's ideas in regard to blockades.

Bad as all this was, and contrary to Madison's instructions and Jefferson's private letters, it was not yet the worst. After Monroe had violated his orders,—had abandoned the ultimata and accepted the commercial restrictions which the President disliked,—when the four commissioners were about to sign the treaty, Monroe and Pinkney were startled to hear that the two Englishmen meant to append an explanatory note to their signatures. News of the Berlin Decree had reached England, and its gravity was at once recognized. The British negotiators formally notified Monroe and Pinkney that unless the American government, before ratification, should give security that it would not recognize the decree, his Majesty George III. would not consider himself bound by the signatures of his commissioners.[10] Signature under such a condition seemed rather the act of a suppliant people than of one which had not yet so much as bought the sword it should have used. Nevertheless Monroe signed.

Monroe was often called a very dull man. He was said to follow the influence of those who stood near him, and was charged by different and opposed politicians with having a genius for blunders; but either Jefferson or Madison might be excused for suspecting that no man on whom they implicitly relied could violate instructions, sacrifice the principles of a lifetime, and throw infinite embarrassments on his Government without some ulterior motive. They could not be blamed for suspecting that Monroe, in signing his treaty, thought more of the Federalist vote than he did of Madison's political promotion.

Monroe afterward defended his treaty in writings more or less elaborate, but his most candid account of his diplomacy in these years was given in a letter to Colonel Taylor of Caroline, written in the year 1810. Of the British treaty, he said:[11]—

"The failure of our business with Spain and the knowledge of the renewal of the negotiation and the manner of it, which were known to every one, were sensibly felt in our concerns with England. She was not willing to yield any portion of what she called her maritime rights, under the light pressure of the non-importation law, to a Power which had no maritime force, not even sufficient to protect any one of its ports against a small squadron, and which had so recently submitted to great injuries and indignities from Powers that had not a single ship at sea. Under such circumstances, it seemed to me to be highly for the interest of our country and to the credit of our government to get out of the general scrape on the best terms we could, and with that view to accommodate our differences with the great maritime Power on what might be called fair and reasonable conditions, if such could be obtained. I had been slighted, as I thought, by the Administration in getting no answers to my letters for an unusual term, and in being subjected to a special mission, nothwithstanding my remonstrance against it on a thorough conviction of its inutility, and by other acts which I could not but feel; yet believing that my service in England would be useful there, and by means thereof give aid to the Administration and to the Republican cause at home, I resolved to stay, and did stay for those purposes. The treaty was an honorable and advantageous adjustment with England. I adopted it in the firm belief that it was so, and nothing has since occurred to change that opinion."